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Pop that bubbly and kiss 2013 good bye and bring out those notepads to make the resolutions for 2014! I am not the sorts to make resolution and even unlikely to keep one all through the year. But 2013 must be an exception to that rule and what I am hoping is a turning point for me. Back in jan 2013 I made a resolution to write about every movie I saw and as a result I started my blog. Since its inception the blog has generated 4600+ hits and given me many a joy as a result.

There were many highlights like when Ashok Banker posted my review of his 8-part Ramayana series on his facebook page! That was the push I needed to convince myself that I was onto something good. But even before that the blog’s very first post was a fresh and refreshing movie which has continued to be the benchmark against which all other movies I saw this year were compared to – Kai Po Che.

In a year of 100 crore plus blockbusters which required as many aspirins to overcome the headaches they caused there were little indie gems ( can’t believe I am using the word Indie in the indian cinematic context!) which made the year a lot more bearable.

Summarized below are my top 10 picks , my bottom 5 and the 3 biggest disappointments. This is not the whole catalogue of movies released in 2013 – just the ones I made an effort to go watch, there are still Oscar heavy hitters like 12 years a slave, August Osage County , The Wolf of Wall Street which I am yet to watch and review.

Top 10 : (in alphabetical order)

Bombay Talkies : a first of sorts where 4 mainstream big-name directors came together to present 4 short stories which celebrated the 100 years of Indian Cinema. Each story holding its own and neither director trying to one-up the other but rather trying to tell an earnest story. Incidentally this is also one my most shared reviews and some people commented that they didn’t immediately see the connect I made between the four stories but did definitely agree afterwards.

Fukrey : A serious rib-tickler thanks to the antics of Choocha and Bholi Punjaban. And featuring the song of the year “Ambarsariya” this one was the most surprising as we went in expecting very little and came out clutching our sides which hurt from laughing out loud. A comedy that did not depend on physical gags and potty humor – my pick for the best comedy of the year!

Gravity : the opening 12-minute sequence is an experience that cannot be compared to any that we have had in theaters ever. A trip to space that we had only imagined so far but was brought life in glorious IMAX by the visionary Alonso Cuarón. Sandra Bullock should trade in her Oscar for best actress for blind side and ask for a new one for this one. The magic of cinema as it was meant to be.

Go Goa Gone : A zombie movie made in india? You have got to be kidding me! And no Ramsay-fication of the same? Get out of here! This was a close second to the comedy of the year pick. Again went in with very little expectation came out with goosebumps from the gross zombies and a hurting jaw from all the laughing.

Kai Po Che : I hate Chetan Bhagat and his brand of Indian-English Lit. but to take his story “3 mistakes of my life” and to make it into a sensitive, humorous and realistic tale of friendship, politics and redemption is not mean task. This introduced us to 3 promising actors and redeemed a director after his overrated RockOn debut. My personal favorite of the year, and a movie that will only get better with time.

Madras Café : this almost made it to the most disappointing because of the over simplification and the lack of cloak and daggers that I wanted from a smartly crafted and a beautifully shot political thriller. But I cannot take away from the fact that sujoy ghosh made a smart movie with believable performances from 2 of the worst actors.

Prisoners : comparisons to Zodiac and Se7en are always going to bode well for any movie in my book and this dark and violent thriller about a man on rampage after his little girl goes missing is something that still gives me the chills when I recall the look of abject hatred on Hugh Jackman’s beautiful face. My pick for the best ensemble acting of the year, Jackman, Melissa leo, Paulo dano, viola davis, maria bello all bloody brilliant and I don’t hate Jake Gyllenhall anymore!

RamLeela : This one is a controversial pick I know. Many people have written off Sanjay Leela Bhansali as a director more consumed with erecting humungous set pieces and working in monochromatic mode than concentrating on the story and character development. I disagree, and strongly at that. RamLeela , a Shakespearean adaptation of Romeo and Juliet set in rural Gujarat between warring clans of Rajadi and Saneda and a opulent multi-hued visual spectacle is the best Bhansali has done in years. This is devdas and HDDCS good. Most definitely the best soundtrack of the year with every single song a win in my book. Give it a watch without preconceived notions against Bhansali and you will be happier for it.

Rush: Nothing – the answer to the question what can Ron Howard not do? To a person who detests Formula one this was definitely one of the best sporting movies ever made. The rivalry between Niki Lauda and James Hunt captured beautifully without playing the sympathy card for either of the protagonists. Daneil Bruhl turning in one of the best supporting acting all year. Beautifully shot, exquisitely scored – this was a highlight of the year without a doubt.

Ship Of Theseus : The redemption of Bollywood in its 100 years of existence which has been marred by either blatantly plagiarized Hollywood fluff or story-less superstar billed histrionic orgy. Ship of theseus took a Grecian paradox ( had people googling what the hell a paradox is ) and turned it into poignant moving cinema which proved to the masses that you don’t need a small country’s GDP-equivalent budget or big-name stars to make a beautiful and technically adept movie. You need a brilliant director, a strong script and absolute dedication to your craft. Karan Johar rightly said – this movie makes every other filmmaker feel inferior. This should have been India’s entry to the Oscars’ foreign language category.

Bottom 5 ( In alphabetical order)

B.A. Pass : what promised to be a sensual Noir film ended up being a one-note repetitive mess which went no were and failed because the director was more consumed by trying to make a stylized movie which tried to touch upon every cliché possible rather than to make a simple story told in layers.

Bhag Milkha Bhag : the trailer set the pulse racing with a buffed up Farhan Akhtar running with a tyre tied to his waist against the stark ladhak landscapes. What was promised as a sporting bio-pic ended up being a boring meaningless mess. I had such high hopes and I was left clutching at straws trying to find any redeeming factors about this movie.

Chashme Baddoor : how can you take a Farooq Sheikh and Deepti Naval classic and butcher it so that it bears no resemblance to the original movie from which it was adapted from. Chashme Baddoor is how.

Dhoom : 3 : I knew this was going to be bad – but so bad that I had to take notes for my review! Every single thing about this movie was an absolute stinking turd. The only saving grace? The world now is in on the secret I knew for years! Aamir Khan is a conman who in guise of perfectionism is a hack who has only gotten lucky with a few good films and is essentially a worthless actor.

Satyagraha : Amitabh is good the rest is bad and Prakash Jha is quickly become a tiresome director to sit through and when the new channels rehash the same political conundrum the nation is going through better than a national award winning director there is something definitely wrong with the movie.

Biggest Disappointments:

Lunchbox : the end product failed to live up to all the hype surrounding the release of the movie and the hue and cry that followed afterwards when this movie was not selected as India’s official entry to the oscars. sure it is a cute little story but it did not live up to the potential that it held and ultimately the biggest disappointment for me for the year.

Man Of Steel : Snyder sullied the name of Nolan by making this mess of a movie. The perfect choice for superman Henry Cavill was not given enough to do in the movie which was more Snyder & Goyer and less Nolan (chris and jonathan both) . a BIG disappointment all around.

Nautanki Saala! : the rising star of the last year Aayushman Khurana fails to entertain and the movie overall is just a giant mess. Less than catchy tunes and a story that had the potential but fails to deliver is the reason why this movie makes it to my list of big disappointments.

So there you have it – I wish I had seen more movies this year than I did and that is a resolution I am certain to make for 2014 and as a result more reviews to write and read. I will try to add more variety than just movie reviews and there is an exciting prospect under development which when accomplished I will be very very very happy to share with all! Here is wishing all you readers of my blog a very happy new year and good luck with those resolutions! Make a resolution because it feels great at the end of the year when you sit down to look at what you have accomplished!

Vijay Krishna Acharya directs Aamir Khan, Abhishek Bachchan, Uday Chopra and Katrina Kaif in the threequel to the Dhoom franchise innovatively titled Dhoom: 3. He does not so much as direct them as he shows them snippets of various Hollywood movies and musicals and asks them to imitate those.

Yashraj productions hasn’t been known to turn in quality cinema in many a decades now – but it still manages to make mildly entertaining fare which the Indian audiences and the Indian diaspora abroad lap up with enthusiasm . But with Dhoom 3 there seems to have been no effort made to make even a half intelligent somewhat original entertainment caper.

The story starts off with a Illusionist like setup in a dim theatre aptly titled “The Great Indian Circus” with an aging Jackie Shroff putting up a show for the evil bank guys in shiny suits. Mr. Anderson (our knowledge of western surnames is limited to Mr. Anderson) isn’t impressed and orders for the theatre to be shut down so that he can auction it. Jackie Shroff does what every responsible father does – kills himself in front of his son Sahir, who we are introduced to as the Oliver Twist kid who dresses like Hugo in 1990s Chicago.

Cut out of dream sequence and Aamir wakes up in a loft overlooking the John Hancockbuilding and looking mighty short in front of the imposing Chicago skyline (in my opinion the best in the world). Cut to The Dark Knight-esque bank robbery (of the same post office building) with a very serious looking Aamir walking down the building with the harness that is there one moment and missing the other. The chase goes from The Dark Knight with the underground chase to Aamir being cornered in the parking lot and coming out ala The Dark Knight Rises (the introduction of “The Bat”) and the dumbfounded cops of Chicago mouthing the same lines as those from Gotham’s finest “you are not going to believe this”.

We can’t sustain this Hollywood inspired nonsense for too long we need to go Rohit Shetty on the audiences so cut to Amma Nagar where Uday Chopra is being held captive by a gunda in a shiny suit (see a trend?). Abhishek Bachchan enters riding a Rickshaw through a wall and drives it all over the roofs of the slum just like Bond does through Turkey in Skyfall. And the chase through the narrow lanes of the slums is also very Mombasa inspired from Inception.

What happens then in Chicago where Jai is called in as the most famous Indian cop to solve the second robbery of the Western Chicago bank and the only clue being a “Joker Calling Card” and a scribbling in Hindi. What follows is a series of unimportant moments with the introduction of Katrina Kaif who serves no purpose in the entirety of the movie. And I am person with a very pro-Katrina bias and all through the movie she was nothing but awkward. The dance steps she was given were more suited to a person of a shorter frame and she was made to stand awkwardly to compensate for the height difference between her and Aamir. Entirely forgettable is what she was. The much touted 5-cr song Malang is nothing but a mish-mash of different Cirque Du Soleil routines from their various shows.

how very RENT like!

The big reveal is again Nolan inspired and is almost predictable if you have been following the various Nolan references that are so on the nose that you almost see a Prestige coming. There is a war-of-the-khan as it was that rages on between two rabid fan-bases the Aamir fan boys and the SRK fan boys. Those in the Aamir camp would be happy to note that this khan does a more convincing job of playing an Autistic/Asperger symptom showing prodigal genius than SRK.

Aamir shuttles between looking constipated when the director’s orders must’ve been to look serious and mean and between a cheerful childlike persona which he does capture very well. Another positive is the child artist who plays Aamir as the young Sahir – now there is one child artist who does not make me cringe and that is saying quite a lot! I hope the young start gets more roles as he is really good.

The music is forgettable, the sets are recycled, the camera work while slick serves is quite indistinguishable. Aamir’s Tap dancing is so shoddy it shouldn’t be allowed to be screened to public. At one point I felt like patting Aamir’s head as one would to a precocious child ( because hitting a child is not allowed) when he goes “ look I can act serious and stuff” , “look I can tap dance”, “look at my big muscles” alright child go away enough is enough is enough.

I went in expecting to hate the movie and on that front it didn’t disappoint. It is a generic recycled unintelligent mess with more plot holes than I cared to count. Katrina is wasted and not even given enough screen time to sit and look pretty. Uday Chopra is Uday Chopra, and Abhishek Bachchan is one note. Aamir is part impressive (a very small part where he plays the autistic persona) and part annoying and grating where he plays Sahir. Watch at your own peril!

The anticipation for Inception was probably higher than what The Dark Knight faced. There were countless articles on the internet floating about and readying to cut Nolan down to size should this mammoth of a movie fail. Everyone on the net was buzzing “Does Inception face unrealistic expectations” “is it too intelligent for the transformers and twilight generation” – don’t even get me started on how we will be known as the twilight generation it’s just gross beyond belief, hopefully Nolan will help to turn that around. After all the man has an impeccable record, Memento and The Prestige are works of genius. Nolan could also be credited with single-handedly turning around the comic book genre with the batman movies.

As legend goes Nolan began “dreaming” up Inception around the same time he was finishing Memento. But Nolan wasn’t Nolan back then he couldn’t walk into Warner bros offices and demand a reported 160 million dollars to shoot a movie in 6 countries headlined by only 1 heavy weight Hollywood name. He let Inception ferment away for 10 years building away his reputation that die-hards like me have come to worship. Like I always say “In Nolan we Trust”. Then came The Dark knight, it brought him an almost fanatical fan base, critical acclaim and a few Oscars including one for supporting actor, a feat almost unheard of in the comic book genre. And more importantly it brought him over 1 billion in revenues just from cinema stubs. Warner was happy to part away with 160 mil just so that Nolan would agree to a third batman.

The story of Inception is complicated and simple at the same time. It’s a heist movie with the hero battling some personal daemons and this final job being his way out of this. Simple right? Well how he tells this story is where it gets complicated. It is a movie that the pop-corn association is going to want to boycott because it doesn’t allow you to be distracted for even a minute. The movie begins with Dom Cobb (di caprio) failing to steal an idea from Saito (Watanabe). Saito sets out to seek Cobb to offer him a job where instead of stealing an idea he would be implanting another into the mind of his rival – this is inception. The stealing and implanting of ideas is done via collective dreaming ( very noetic of Mr. Nolan). Cobb sets out to recruit a motley crew to help him achieve this feat, a feat he tried earlier and failed with disastrous consequences. I cannot delve any deeper into the story without giving out the exact specific details of the movie which could very well be wrong depending on which way you slice this movie. Also I don’t want to spoil the movie for those who haven’t seen it yet (come out from hibernation already!!)

Inception features a Nolan regular Hans zimmer turning in another brilliant soundtrack. Inception is a movie that can be discussed on so many levels. Even the soundtrack is not just there to tag along with the story, it works to add another level to this already densely layered movie. The Edith Piaf song “Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien” or no regrets in plain old English is used with varying degrees of speed to indicate which “dream level” one is watching. And for the conspiracy theorist me it begs the question was the choice of song just a co-incidence considering that Marion Cotillard who plays Dom Cobb’s wife won an Oscar playing the troubled singer.

The special effect work and blend in so perfectly with he world Nolan creates that it is nearly impossible to seperate the dream from the reality ( and the ending doesnt help in the slightest). Wally Pfisher who first collaborated with Nolan on Memento seems to have worked on the vision as long as Nolan has because it is impossible to tell who’s vision we are seeing Nolan’s or Pfisher. The worlds blend into each other from the fast paced chase sequence in Mombasa to the snow-clad final “level” it is one gigantic maze that nolan imagined and Pfisher translated on the screen.

The talented cast comprises of legendary Michael Caine and “The most underrated actor in Hollywood” Leonardo Di Caprio along with Ken Watanabe and another Nolan regular Cillian Murphy. It also features two of the best young actors Hollywood has to offer in forms of Joseph Gordon Levitt and Ellen Page. The movies best one liners come from Tom Hardy who is completely unrecognizable from his brilliant turn as Charles Bronson in a movie last year by the same last name. Marion Cotillard although present on screen for a very brief time goes from tragic to treacherous in a single breath and is beautiful as both. Each one of them turns in a performance worthy of Nolan’s direction.

Dreams are often a very fertile ground for any cinematic representation but more often than not these interpretation on screen leave the audience in flux and more confused than mesmerized – case in point David lynch’s Eraserhead. But Nolan overcomes that and more. This movie entertains entices and enthralls beyond any anticipation I held. Nolan Sir take a bow!! You have outdone yourself.

this is a reproduction of the note published on my facebook account on July 30, 2010 . Facebook seems to be loosing my notes and this is one of my favorite write ups so posting here.